They shared their food with the animals of the fields.
They lived in stables. They died without hope.
It was the seven hundred and fifty-third year since the
founding of Rome. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus
was living in the palace of the Palatine Hill, busily engaged
upon the task of ruling his empire.
In a little village of distant Syria, Mary, the wife of Joseph
the Carpenter, was tending her little boy, born in a stable of
Bethlehem.
This is a strange world.
Before long, the palace and the stable were to meet in open
combat.
And the stable was to emerge victorious.
JOSHUA OF NAZARETH
THE STORY OF JOSHUA OF NAZARETH, WHOM
THE GREEKS CALLED JESUS
IN the autumn of the year of the city 783 (which would be
62 A.D., in our way of counting time) AEsculapius Cultellus, a
Roman physician, wrote to his nephew who was with the army
in Syria as follows:
My dear Nephew,
A few days ago I was called in to prescribe for a sick man
named Paul. He appeared to be a Roman citizen of Jewish
parentage, well educated and of agreeable manners. I had
been told that he was here in connection with a law-suit, an appeal
from one of our provincial courts, Caesarea or some such
place in the eastern Mediterranean. He had been described to
me as a ``wild and violent'' fellow who had been making
speeches against the People and against the Law.
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